Innocent
by iExperiment
Summary: Just an idea I've had for a while. Took me long enough to get it typed up... :p Rated T for hints of torture and severe Skadki-bashing. But not how you think.


_I don't own Bionicle. It is the sole property of the amazing Lego god Greg Farshtey. Long live Bionicle! Beware, this is my first attempt at horror. I always wanted to write one of these, especially after reading Vezon's Wonderland. I apologize now if it's a little...poetic-ish. I use pretty big words sometimes. :3_

INNOCENT

He hadn't done anything.

His partner was, as Skadki go, innocent. No escape attempts, hadn't caused a riot, hadn't picked a fight with a guard in months. Hadn't so much as LOOKED at 'em wrong in two WHOLE months.

But they took him anyways. Marched into the cell and dragged him out, down the endless rows of cells to Mata Nui only knows where, and only Mata Nui knew what they'd do to him once they got there.

And he hadn't even done anything.

Derzak was sitting on his bunk when the guards came in, and he was still sitting there, frozen in terror and incomprehension, when they left. Then the cell door swung shut with a clang, and his cellmate's hysteric wails finally pierced his mind, and he leapt off the bunk and threw himself against the bars. "No! Nonono!" he screamed. "You can't take him! You can't! He didn't even do anything! He's innocent!" Even as he said those words, a little voice in the back of his mind told him that that was silly; he was a Skadki, and Skadki are never innocent. They were violent and hateful, and as a result were hated and treated violently by most other beings in the universe. Derzak had yet to hear of a Skadki that wasn't hated; one that was kind and had lots of friends and wasn't treated with fear and scorn and hatred everywhere he went.

_But he hadn't even done anything…_

That last thought kept Derzak throwing himself against the unrelenting metal bars, snarling and clawing and cursing and pleading; anything to bring back the partner who had become so much like a brother to him. But the Brotherhood starved and beat and deprived their prisoners of water and sleep, and food, and so Derzak had only so much strength to spare. Inevitably he began to tire, and as he tired he began to slow, and as he slowed, he became aware of the hulking body of one of the Brotherhood's genetically engineered enforcers, sneering down at exhausted, grief-consumed Skadki. But if the sneer was bad, what came out of his mouth was even worse.

"He's not innocent, Skadki." Looking up at the grinning mouth, spewing breath so foul he could smell it from where he was standing, a good 5 feet or so away, Derzak marveled once again that it was basic Matoran that came out of these monsters' mouths, and not the snarls and growls of savage, uncivilized Rahi like he had always imagined. For just a moment, he allowed himself the tiny pleasure of picturing the guard with smoke and fire pouring from his mouth and nostrils, a demonic being with twisted horns and snarling, slobbery jaws ready to maim and tear and destroy. The enforcer held back a laugh watching him; he was somewhere else at the moment, just as they all wished they be. He bared his teeth in pleasure.

_Reality check, little Skadki._

He then spoke again, shattering his victim's already-fragile daydream.

"You're not innocent either, Skadki." Derzak blinked at him, slow to come back to reality and to process what he was hearing. Slowly he raised his eyes to the jailer's face. "Not…Wait…What..?" he asked, dazed. The guard's sneer grew, stretching from one end of his ugly face to the other 'til it seemed to go on forever. "You'.-kiiiiii…." He threw his head back and laughed a long, horrible, drawn-out laugh. Derzak dropped to the floor in silence, gazing down the hallway in despair. "Not…innocent…" he whispered despondently. "Xitoli…" Then he bowed his head and wept. And as he wept, the guard's smile started to grow again, and grow, and grow; and as it grew he laughed, and laughed, another long and terrible laugh. "Cry, cry, little Skadki." he chanted, cruel red eyes glowering down at his prisoner. "Cry, cry, as hard as you can." He squatted down in front of the cell and put his head near Derzak's. "Cry all you want but he's .Back." The last word he all but spat into the wretched Skadki's ear. Derzak pulled his knees to his chest, put his head down, and screamed. The scream echoed down the long blank hallways past cells full of prisoners who were more dead than alive, past looming guards and sick-minded beings called Makuta who thought they had earned the right to rule this universe as they pleased; past Rahi and Matoran slave, all the way to a short dark hall that led to a small, dark room…where the torn, anguished shrieks of a tormented Skadki joined in a hellish symphony with the screams of a Skadki back down the hall, crying for the brother he would never see.


End file.
